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If you are wondering what’s behind the stubbornly high poverty rate, which has remained virtually frozen for the last two years despite continued economic growth, one thing is unemployment insurance (UI). Not too much UI — too little. As our new report explains, if the UI system hadn’t weakened, poverty would have fallen in...

The Census Bureau’s release next week of updated poverty figures may lead some people to compare today’s poverty rate to those of 1960s and conclude that the last half-century of federal efforts to alleviate poverty have largely failed.

But that’s simply not accurate. Comparing today’s official poverty rate with those of the 1960s yields highly distorted results because...

A House Budget Committee hearing today is looking at how anti-poverty programs have worked over the last 50 years. As I explained yesterday, safety net programs lifted 40 million people — including almost 9 million children — out of poverty in 2011, according to the Census Bureau’s Supplemental...

A House Budget Committee hearing tomorrow will examine the progress we’ve made in fighting poverty over the last 50 years. Extensive research shows that the set of supports the United States has developed to help low-income Americans make ends meet and obtain health care do, in fact, lift millions of people out of poverty, help “make work pay” by supplementing low wages, and enable millions...

Next year, the nation will mark the 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty, which President Johnson proclaimed in his State of the Union address of January 1964. Sadly, we should expect to hear a drumbeat of attacks claiming that, as President Reagan said long ago, we fought a war on poverty and “poverty won.” Indeed, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan said recently of the...

With policymakers considering overhauling the tax code this year, it’s worth noting that about one in four current or former armed forces families with children receive the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the low-income piece of the Child Tax Credit (CTC) — two key tax credits for low- and moderate-income working families.

With Mother’s Day approaching and policymakers considering overhauling the tax code this year, it’s worth noting that two key tax credits for low-income workers lifted 2.3 million mothers out of poverty in 2011 (the most recent year available), using a Census Bureau poverty measure that counts tax credits and government benefits.

With President Obama and lawmakers of both parties vowing to achieve further deficit reduction, the stakes are high for low- and moderate-income Americans. Moreover, as we explain in a new paper, if deficit reduction targets programs that provide supports and foster opportunity for low-income families, the adverse effects...

With Thanksgiving right around the corner, this is an appropriate time to look at some new figures on hardship. New CBPP analysis of monthly Census data finds that more than half (58 percent) of poor children last year lived in households that faced one or more of the following: